


Every Single Day

by zeldadestry



Category: Detachment (2011)
Genre: Community: 100_women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 23:45:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You don’t have to tell me,” she says.  “Don’t tell me when you’re going to visit, I don’t wanna know.”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“Because- because then, every day, any time, I can wonder if maybe I’m going to see you soon.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Single Day

**Author's Note:**

> prompt 080, "Blue", for 100_women fanfic challenge

Henry doesn’t smoke anymore. “I’m not gonna be a hypocrite,” he tells her. “I’m not gonna do the things I wouldn’t want you to do.” 

 

Her favorite moments are whenever he’s with her.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she says. “Don’t tell me when you’re going to visit, I don’t wanna know.”

“Why not?”

“Because- because then, every day, any time, I can wonder if maybe I’m going to see you soon.”

Henry frowns, but not in a bad way, not like he’s upset, she can tell he’s only thinking over what she said. “You’d like that?” he finally asks.

She shrugs, rubs at her mouth. She never wears lipstick anymore but sometimes she feels like it’s smeared, anyway. “Yes.”

 

“You hungry? They said at the office that we can go get dinner, we just have to sign you out.”

“Dinner sounds awesome. I get tired of the food in the cafeteria.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

They walk through the neighborhood together, looking in the windows of several different restaurants and reading the menus before they decide on an Italian place that has a few tables out on the sidewalk. He sits down first, and she takes the chair next to him. “Henry?” she asks him, after they’ve ordered.

“Yeah.”

“Can I hold your hand?”

“If you want.”

He reaches his hand towards her and she takes it into both of her own, looks at it as closely as she would if she wanted to draw it, remember it forever, down to the lines crisscrossing his palm. “Do you wear the ring a lot? Or only on days when you visit?”

“I always wear it,” he answers.

“You like it, huh?”

He just smiles at her. 

 

There’s a piano in one of the common rooms at the group home. It’s old and banged up, and probably out of tune, but she likes it and she checks a book for beginners out of the library and starts teaching herself to play. She shows off for Henry after a few weeks, playing shit like twinkle twinkle little star and amazing grace and she even sings along, a bit. When she finishes, he stands and claps for her. His eyes are wet. “That’s awesome, Erica.”

“Liar.” She sticks her tongue out at him. “I know I suck.”

“No, you don’t. You’re starting something- you’re trying something new and you’re right where you need to be.” She blushes, pushes the front pieces of her hair back, because she’s growing it out and it keeps falling in her face. He holds up a finger. “That reminds me,” he says, and starts digging through his bag. “I got you something.” She bounces on her toes while she waits. He turns away from her for just a moment and, when he spins back, he holds out both his hands, curled into fists. She taps the right one. “Sorry,” he says, spreading out his fingers to show they hold nothing. “Try again?” She points to his left hand. He flips it over and opens it, revealing blue barrettes. 

“Thank you,” she says. “They’re so pretty.” She puts in one and he puts the other in for her. She bats her eyelashes at him. “How do I look?”

“Nice,” he says. “They had them in red, too.”

“I like the blue,” she says. Thinking, because you chose them for me.

 

They’re wandering the aisles of the library together, because she has a report due in two weeks for her English class. “Pick something,” she says, overwhelmed by the options, all the names of authors she doesn’t recognize. “What books are your favorites?”

“Why don’t you tell me what you already like to read and then I’ll help you find something else you might like.”

 

She calls him, sometimes, after lights out. “Erica, come on, it’s a school night.”

“I know, just five minutes.” 

“Everything ok?”

“I guess.”

“Come on, let’s hear it.”

She closes her eyes and imagines she’s back at his place, on the bed he made for her, underneath his clean sheets. She remembers how it felt to lie there and know, this is Henry’s bed, this is where he sleeps, rests, how she held the pillow tightly like she was hugging him. “Do you worry about the future?” she whispers.

“What part of it?”

“I don’t know. All of it, I guess.”

“You know what Einstein said? I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”

“Are you like that, too?”

“No. No, not at all, but I don’t think I’d mind it. I think I’d like to be.” He clears his throat. “Is there- is there something you need to tell me?”

“No.”

“Something you want to talk about?”

“Not specifically.”

“Ok. Just checking. You know you can, right? Anything.”

“I know, Henry.” She imagines facing him in a bed big enough for both of them, imagines him holding both her hands against his chest, like he wanted her to feel the proof of his beating heart. “I just wanted to hear your voice. Will you sing something for me?”

“I’m not much of a singer.”

“Please?”

And he does. 

 

“Is the future treating you any better?” he asks, the next time they meet.

She shrugs, opens her notebook to a particular page and hands it over to him so he can read what she wrote:  
At the home- everyone here has a fucked up story. So I don’t- I didn’t have it the easiest but I didn’t have it the worst, either. But what happens when I don’t live here anymore? What happens, like in college, if I can go, I mean, when I’m gonna meet so many new people and I’ll know that a lot of them, maybe most of them, they haven’t lived through anything like this, like my life. And how am I gonna be friends with those people when I’m probably going to hate them, at least a little bit? Maybe I’ll even hate them a lot, because they had it so much better than I did. What am I gonna do about that?

His fingertips tap at the empty paper left over beneath her words. “That’s a good question,” he says.

“Do you ever get angry, Henry?”

“Yeah.” He closes her notebook but holds onto it. “Yeah, I lose my temper. It’s not- I’m not ok with it, you know, but it happens.”

She’s curious what he might be like, pushed too far, but she hopes she doesn’t ever have to see it, because she can’t wish for anything that would bring him pain. “Sometimes, when I’m upset, I just write the same shit over and over. Even the same damn sentence. And it’s not poetic, not like yours.”

Henry laughs. “You give me way too much credit, kid.”

“Don’t call me that,” she protests. 

“Sorry, kid.”

“Ha ha.” She swats at his shoulder. “But, seriously- do you think I could- keep going? After high school, I mean?”

“Yes.” He carefully slides her notebook into the front pocket of her bag. “You’re gonna get there, if that’s what you want. I know you will.” 

“It seems so far away.”

“I know, but it’s much closer than the distance between where you were before and where you are now, right? Isn’t that the furthest you’ve ever had to travel?”

She shakes her head. “The distance from the street to your place. The distance from your place to here. Those were the scary ones.”

“I’d be lucky to have a student like you, you know that?”

“I wish-” she’s about to say that she wishes she could take one of his classes, have him as a teacher, except she doesn’t, not really, because school is a system, and what’s between them, it doesn’t fit into any categories, it’s not bound by any rules and that’s part of why it matters so much. Erica knows about Meredith and how guilty Henry feels for not being able to comfort her. She’s grateful for everything Henry was and is able to give her freely. “I was thinking- maybe we could scan those pictures and drawings Meredith left you and put them online, like as a tribute to her.”

“That’s a great idea.”

“Because they shouldn’t- shouldn’t just be stored away, yeah? Other people should get a chance to see them.”

“I think you’re right.”

Before he leaves, she asks him, “Do you think we might live together again, someday? Like when I’m done with college and have a real job and know how to take care of myself so you don’t have to worry about me?” He smiles at her, but it’s a sad one and she knows he’s not thinking the same way about it that she is. “I could make you dinner every night.” 

His hand reaches in his pocket, comes out empty, probably searching for the cigarettes he no longer carries. “Erica, by the time you’re that old, you’re not even gonna want that. You’ll want your own life. You’ll have lots of friends, probably a boyfriend, and you’re gonna want to spend time with them, not me.” His fingers twitch. “And you know that you don’t owe me anything, not ever, right? You know that?”

“I know.” Henry always wants things to be clear between them, no misunderstandings. She tries to offer the same. “I didn’t say it because I thought it was what you wanted. I just thought it sounded- nice, you know?”

He puts his arm around her shoulder. “I’m sure it would’ve been,” he says, as though it’s only a wish she’s making, and nothing that could ever be. 

 

She can imagine having a boyfriend or a girlfriend someday, sure. She’s not ready for it, not yet, because there would be so much she wouldn’t risk telling them, so much she’s not able to say, because she’s scared of being judged. She’ll want to take the chance, someday, but not now, not today. And yet, when she meets them, whoever they are, the person out there who’s gonna be worth the dare, she could never care about them more than she does about Henry. She could love them as much as she loves Henry, sure, of course, but more than Henry? No. 

And what about if he falls for someone, maybe even marries her? She can not face, not yet, him wearing a ring that’s not the one she gave him. What if he has kids? Can she stand how much she’ll miss this, the security of knowing she’s the most important person in his world?

 

They’re at the park again, but not at his favorite bench. She brought a blanket, instead, and she’s sitting cross-legged, and he’s lying on his back, his head resting on her thigh. 

“I like your nose,” she tells him. She taps the bridge of it, and then the tip, and giggles when he bats her hand away. “Most people have boring noses.”

“Nah.”

“It’s true. Yours is special.” She drags her fingers slowly through his hair, seeking out and smoothing any tangles. “Do you remember what I told you, when you said you were sending me away?”

His eyes are closed but she sees him flinch, strokes her fingers over the furrow of his brow, hoping he’ll understand the unspoken message, let go, it’s ok. He still looks pained, his lips twisted, and she bends over him, touches her mouth to one of his eyelids and then the other. “I love you,” she says, holding his face between her hands. “And not because no one has ever loved me besides you.” He reaches up to take her wrist and then he rests her hand across his chest, like he can see inside her, like he knows how she wishes to feel his heart beat. “I didn’t just say it because I wanted you to let me stay.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“I believe you.”

She hears what he won’t say, that he trusts she feels that way but doesn’t accept it, doesn’t think he deserves it. She’ll wait, how ever long into the future it takes, for a moment when they believe in themselves as much as they believe in each other.


End file.
